The Effects of Digital Marketing on Consumers’ Buying Behavior(Case Study: Customers of the Digikala Online Store)

Today, businesses need effective and efficient management to do their business successfully. Without a doubt, one of the most important management concepts that can be very effective in this way is the concept of ‘marketing management’ and, of course, in today’s world of businesses, the concept of marketing management could not be useful without the use of technological tools. In this regard, the concept of ‘digital marketing’ is a window that helps businesses improve their selling in a manner consistent with up-to-date technology and strive to meet the needs of the consumer, which is truly the most important asset of any business. Digital marketing is a type of modern marketing that uses Internet-based tools to address the main function of marketing, which is effective and efficient sales on cyberspace platforms. In this new era, businesses are looking to maximize the influence and attraction of customers, instead of focusing on the traditional sale and presentation of goods and services with new and creative methods and the use of digital tools. Under these circumstances, traditional mass markets also give way to fragmented markets with many and varied segments in which ‘personalization’ and customized products for different customers play a key role.Therefore, it is essential for any business to carefully monitor consumers’ buying behavior in digital environments. Consumers’ buying behavior also deals with the decision-making process of people involved in purchasing products and services. In fact, consumers want to be part of the brand and what goes with it. Behavior depends on the consumer’s mental structure and the stimuli that marketers use to turn the consumer’s mind to shopping. Understanding consumers’ behavior is especially important because consumers are certainly the key to the success of any organization. Since all the goals of the marketing and sales departments of any organization are ultimately waiting for the consumer to make and repeat the purchase and create values such as loyalty and satisfaction, focusing on the consumer’s purchasing decision seems logical. Today, consumers’ behavior is undoubtedly influenced by various digital marketing tools and channels, such as social media marketing, content marketing, search engine marketing, online public relations, affiliate marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, and re-targeting.Social media is a network of active users who interact with each other in a multi-layered way through the production, sharing, and retrieval of a variety of digital content on the social web platform. These media have special capabilities and flexibility. Content marketing is a strategic design approach, meaning that relevant and valuable feedback is provided to assist the buyer in making a possible decision. Content marketing is basically about attracting customers who are looking for some products but are confused.  What users know about search engine optimization (SEO) is how they can identify and focus on the results that are potentially affected by SEO. In fact, SEO strategy influences search engine results tagging and their complexity and has the power to turn complex structures into simple structures with higher success rates. In fact, SEO has a very important effect on the ranking of businesses. Digital marketing systems emphasize online public relations as a very important strategy to help increase the company’s value proposition in the market. This strategy helps companies to turn to profitable exchanges with effective mechanisms and keep their customers satisfied, especially when integrated communication with them is emphasized and increases customer loyalty. It helps build trust as well as effective interaction.In general, affiliate marketing is one of the digital marketing platforms that promotes products or services by online distribution channels through third parties and is actually known as an effective tool to encourage small and medium enterprises to have a say in global competition. This is a modern form of fee-based marketing. Email marketing is one of the traditional tools of digital marketing. E-mail marketing is a database marketing in which an e-mail database is prepared by an online marketer or digital marketer and sent to people who may be interested in buying products. Mobile marketing is also important because it can be used as a personalized and standard tool in the field of digital marketing for businesses. On the other hand, it provides unique psychological and social stimuli for covering the impact of digital marketing. Mobile marketing is defined as all activities necessary to interact with the consumer through the use of mobile devices to facilitate the sale or distribution of products and services. In fact, the use of interactive digital media to meet the needs of consumers is at the core of this digital marketing tool. And one of the most popular and effective digital marketing methods is re-targeting because it is available in many advertising channels and is a great strategy that affects customer buying behavior. It also leads to changing the customer's online shopping behavior. In fact, re-targeting helps customers find and buy the best products that are searched online and also benefits businesses in terms of sales and increased turnover. Finally, consumers’ behaviors include all the actions that consumers take in connection with the acquisition, use, and disposal of goods and services after consumption. Buying a product or service, providing verbal information about a product or service to another person, post-consumption trends, and gathering information to buy are all examples of consumer behavior.The present applied research has been carried out with the aim of investigating the effects of digital marketing on consumers’ buying behavior among customers of the Digikala online store. To collect the data, after designing a new conceptual model, a questionnaire was distributed among 492 customers of the Digikala online store. Using statistical analyses and structural equation modeling by SPSS 26 and Smart PLS 3.0 software, model general fitting and hypotheses testing were performed. In order to express the results, it is necessary to explain that all digital marketing tools and channels such as search engines, content, social media, online public relations, affiliate marketing, email marketing, and mobile marketing, except re-targeting behavior had a positive and significant impact among Digikala's customers. Of course, online public relations, content marketing, and social media marketing were identified as the most effective digital marketing tools and channels for the Digikala store. In this store, Digital marketing actions should be developed with the most effective channels and tools for consumers’ buying behavior for optimal customer management.As mentioned, it became clear how much the various digital marketing channels influence consumers' purchasing decisions. Hence, a clear understanding of this issue for managers and activists in the field of digital marketing and consumer behavior is a competitive advantage that can not be easily imitated by competitors because here we are dealing with the customer experience. An experience that, if pleasing to the customer, will never go to competitors for similar services. Based on the results of this research, the three digital marketing channels affecting consumers' shopping behavior among digital goods customers are: 1) Online public relations, 2) Content marketing, and 3) Social media. Therefore, it is recommended that digital product managers in the digital marketing department focus on the above three areas and new and specialized people in the form of different ways of cooperation (full-time, part-time, consulting, etc.).In addition, it can be said that according to the results of the present research, the online public relations channel has a greater impact than other channels. The next suggestion for businesses in the field of digital marketing is to develop digital marketing infrastructure alongside traditional sales platforms and use digital marketing channels tailored to their capabilities. Future researchers are also encouraged to develop a conceptual model of this research and to add other digital marketing channels to develop the concepts of this type of marketing and examine its impact on consumer buying behavior. Among the innovations of the current study, we can mention the comprehensive study of the impact of 8 important channels of digital marketing on consumers’ buying behavior.